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closeWednesday, Jul. 01, 2009
Sam Rockwell deserves meteoric rise with role in 'Moon'
Sam Rockwell deserves a meteoric rise with his role in the new drama 'Moon.'
By CHRISTOPHER KELLY
Sam Rockwell has appeared in Oscar-nominated films like Frost/Nixon and The Green Mile, he has worked with directors such as Ridley Scott, George Clooney and David Mamet, and his performance in the new science-fiction drama Moon is the best by any actor so far this year.
Why, then, can’t Sam Rockwell get the attention he deserves?
At the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin in March, one young filmgoer stood up at a screening for Moon and essentially said she had no clue about the 40-year-old’s long and varied résumé.
"I should have said, 'Why don’t you come to my room and we’ll go over all my film history,’" Rockwell jokes. "But I didn’t have the wits about me.
"It’s like, 'Go to the video store,’" he says during an interview the next morning. "I don’t know what to say. If you’re into movies, you probably know actors like me, and you are aware of them. But if you’re not, you might not know who the hell I am."
Moon may be the movie that changes all that. Directed by first-timer Duncan Jones, who happens to be David Bowie’s son, the unexpectedly moving film introduces us to Sam Bell, a man whose three-year tour as the solitary occupant of a space station is finally coming to an end. But when Sam is injured, he wakes up in the company of his very own clone — a bigger, stronger, faster version of himself that appears determined to dispose of him. (The movie opens Friday at the Angelika in Dallas and screens at the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth from July 10 to 12.)
From a technical standpoint, Rockwell’s performance is a tour de force, with the actor playing two physically different versions of himself, often in the same scene; it’s the most convincing dual role since Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers. But what makes the movie so potent is that Rockwell also taps into an undercurrent of existential dread. In his own words, this is a movie that dares to ask a question many of us would never want to have to answer: If you met yourself, would you actually like yourself?
"Dead Ringers and Midnight Cowboy were two films that were really helpful to me [in preparing for the role]," he explains. "[In Moon], one of the clones is getting sick — that’s why I watched Midnight Cowboy; I think Dustin Hoffman really does that really well — and the other one is more like Sam Shepherd in The Right Stuff."
The other inspiration was Ridley Scott’s Alien — the quintessential study of humanity unmoored from planet Earth, fighting monsters literally spawned from within.
"The acting was very real," says Rockwell. "Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Sigourney Weaver — all these amazing actors. The fear is so palpable in that film.... We wanted that gritty reality to it to ground the science fiction. So that was very important that it be kitchen-sink real."
In fact, Alien was one of the movies that both actor and director first bonded over. But, according to Jones, Rockwell’s Moon mission almost didn’t happen. .
"Sam had me on tenterhooks for a long time," says Jones. "He was working on Frost/Nixon. He needed the time to work out whether he could do this movie. We had just started looking at other actors, but we held on, and I’m glad we did."
Now begins the process of trying to persuade people to see a challenging film whose special effects actually enhance the drama, as opposed to most summer movies, where the special effects are the only drama. The movie, which also features Kevin Spacey as the voice of a HAL-like computer called GERTY, premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in January and has been screening at other festivals in order to build word of mouth.
"It’s an unusual riddle to solve," admits Jones, "how to market this film, and who to market it to."
But even if it doesn’t launch Rockwell into the Best Actor Oscar race, where he so dearly belongs, at least the actor has another high-profile part coming down the pike: He’s playing arms dealer Justin Hammer, one of the two bad guys (the other is Mickey Rourke) in next summer’s Iron Man 2. At least then maybe that young lady in Austin will finally know what an extraordinary talent had been standing before her.
"[Robert Downey Jr. and I] have some good juicy scenes together," Rockwell says. "I think we can do some good stuff."
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